This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Rush's Birther bona fides
By Greg Lewis

After a busy opening hour, Rush began Hour 2 complaining about the ABC radio news report that plays at the top of the hour during the program. Rush mocked the report for pinning Obama's drop in poll numbers on his “grappl[ing]” with the “tough issues.” Rush asked: Did we ever hear analysis like that during the Bush administration?

Rush went on to describe the White House as being in “disarray” because Obama's personality “is not working anymore.” There is no more “Bam magic.” Then Rush returned to his Bill Clinton comparison from the previous hour. Clinton had high approvals during his impeachment hearings because the economy was roaring, but, Rush said, they “really didn't like the reprobate.” Obama is liked, unlike Clinton, explained Rush, “but the economy is excrement.”

Anyway, all this means that now we will see the “real Obama” because of the “disarray” and “frustration” that the “magic isn't working”:

LIMBAUGH: We are now going to see the real Obama, starting today, with this speech -- how he seeks to smear and destroy people behind the scenes who disagree with him.

We're going to see the TV ads now. We're going to see ACORN and other groups become even more active. We will see efforts to mischaracterize Obama opponents. We will see and hear continual lies about their motives, people who oppose either cap and tax or the health care plans. So get ready, because we are going to soon see the real Obama. The magic has worn off.

Then -- as if we didn't have our fill of her in the first hour -- it was time for Rush to read more from Betsy McCaughey. Rush read straight from her recent New York Post op-ed. This isn't the first time Rush has provided an echo chamber for McCaughey, someone who has been notorious for coming up with falsehoods about health care reform.

Rush took a brief interlude while reading McCaughey's op-ed to once again complain about New York's “harassing audit” of him -- Rush said that he has to prove 14 different ways to New York tax authorities where he is everyday, but “Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. All he'd have to do is show a birth certificate.” It's getting to be too much here, folks. Yes, Obama has produced a birth certificate. It's right here (along with all the other proof of Obama's citizenship), and it's not a forgery, regardless of how many anonymous Internet document experts Jerome Corsi cites in claiming otherwise. It's gotten to the point where we've had to divide up what we hear on the Limbaugh program every day into “legitimate nonsense” and “illegitimate nonsense.” Legitimate nonsense encapsulates the rote repetition of health care falsehoods, cap-and-trade lies, etc. Those at least deal with real issues. But rest assured that Birther nonsense, which Rush has dabbled in before but never as directly as this, falls squarely in the “illegitimate nonsense” category. This is supposed to be the national voice for Republicans, the major outlet for conservative thought, and here the host is accepting and promoting the fevered, ridiculous, and offensive dream of the lunatic fringe that the president of the United States is not a citizen.

After the break, it was more polling. Rush cited a recent Public Policy Polling report finding Obama's favorability at 50 percent, and also cited the latest 2012 poll from Rasmussen, via Drudge (noticing a theme today?). This reminded Rush of his dinner last Thursday night -- long story short, Rush got into an argument with his lady friend's cousins over Sarah Palin. Rush admitted that he “blew up” and was ashamed of the incident. Nonetheless, he explained, like he has so many times before, why he thinks Sarah Palin is the bee's knees and blamed the media's unfair coverage of her.

Rush also repeated his sentiments regarding a third party. He's entirely against the idea of forming one, but suggested that Colin Powell and John McCain create their own third party, “and let us have the Republican Party back.” On the other side of the break, Rush joked about what this new party's platform would be -- Rush suggested they wouldn't actually tell anybody.

Then it was more about health care reform, with Rush commenting on Obama's speech earlier in the hour. Rush declared that the speech was “breathtakingly misrepresentative” because Obama has no interest in savings or efficiencies in health care. Rush went on to argue that he refuses to listen to what Obama has to say about government health care until Obama sends his own children to public schools, lives in public housing, uses public transportation, and lives off the public pension program. If he doesn't do this, Rush declared, he has “zip, zero, nada credibility.” So, by this same garbage logic, we assume that Rush's many exhortations of the Iraq war were not credible, since Rush himself never served in the military. And all that advice Rush offers to the GOP on how to win in 2010 and 2012 is also not credible because Rush himself has never run for office. And Rush's claim to be “America's Truth Detector” isn't credible because he so rarely tells the truth -- well, perhaps that's not the best example, but you get the idea.

Then it was time for Rush to go to the phones. He took a caller who had contacted various representatives and senators to ask if they would eliminate their health care in favor of the public option, as Rush had recently instructed his callers to do. The caller found no support for such a plan among those he called. Rush repeated his point that elitist leftists have no credibility on public programs, and that their plan is to have power over you, limiting your freedom.

The next caller told Rush that government involvement is the reason health insurance costs so much already. Rush repeated his point that it's the subprime health care program. Then Rush took another caller who declared that government already controls who will be born, and with health care reform, they'll control who will die. Rush agreed that this is what would happen, and cited 84 year-old former New York City Mayor Ed Koch's recent quadruple bypass. Rush guaranteed that your average 84 year-old would not get that sort of treatment under “ObamaCare.”

One more break, and Rush was back to telling us that Obama was trying to ramp up the crisis mentality. Then he played some audio of Obama's speech today on health care. Rush brilliantly refuted Obama's argument by childishly playing a sound bite of the speech and peppering it with a series of “nope's.” “None of it is true,” he stated.

Simon Maloy, Zachary Pleat, and Ariana Probinsky contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights from Hour 2

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: We're going to see the real Obama now because of this disarray and because of this frustration that that magic isn't working. We are now going to see the real Obama, starting today, with this speech -- how he seeks to smear and destroy people behind the scenes who disagree with him.

We're going to see the TV ads now. We're going to see ACORN and other groups become even more active. We will see efforts to mischaracterize Obama opponents. We will see and hear continual lies about their motives, people who oppose either cap and tax or the health care plans. So get ready, because we are going to soon see the real Obama. The magic has worn off.

America's Truth Rejector

Rush claimed Obama “has yet to have to prove he's a citizen”:

LIMBAUGH: Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. All he'd have to do is show a birth certificate. He has yet to have to prove he's -- I have to show them 14 different ways where the hell I am every day of the year for three years.